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Crypto.com has secured a principal licence with Mastercard, enabling the company to directly issue cards on Mastercard’s network. Crypto.com will launch a card in Bahrain powered by Mastercard . The new programme will leverage Mastercard’s trusted, scalable and secure payments network to enable Crypto.com customers to use their card at over 150 million in-store and online locations worldwide. Users can easily fund their cards through the Crypto.com app using e-money wallets or third party-issued credit and debit cards. The innovative payment product will be available across all five Crypto.com card tiers, including Black Obsidian, offering rewards up to 8% on spending and will be denominated in USD. “We’re really proud to be partnering with Mastercard, a global technology leader in the payments industry, and utilising our recently issued Payment Service Provider licence from the Central Bank of Bahrain to launch our world-renowned prepaid card to our users in Bahrain and beyond,” said Karl Mohan, General Manager APAC & MEA of Crypto.com. “Mastercard has shown its support for the digital assets industry by creating a robust card programme service that’s specifically tailored for our customers, allowing us to expand our product offering into new markets whilst proving our continued commitment to the highest levels of security and compliance.” “We are delighted to welcome Crypto.com as a Mastercard Principal Member. The programme provides a wide range of benefits and opportunities beyond the direct issuance of Mastercards. Crypto.com will now have access to our global network, enabling transactions wherever Mastercard is accepted, our innovative payment solutions powered by cutting-edge technology, and our comprehensive tools for enhancing transaction security and fraud protection,” said Amnah Ajmal, Executive Vice President, Market Development, EEMEA, Mastercard. The partnership cements the progression of Crypto.com’s popular card programme globally, as the company seeks to give its users more freedom and choice on how to spend their crypto assets in real-world payment scenarios.

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NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of his efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs. In a pair of posts on his Truth Social site Monday evening, Trump wrote that, “On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States.” He said the new tariffs would remain in place “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! ” Trump also threatened to charge China an additional 10% tariff, “above any additional Tariffs” on all products entering the United States over concerns about drugs, including fentanyl. It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic before he takes office in the new year.Unlike scores of people who scrambled for the blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy to lose weight in recent years, Danielle Griffin had no trouble getting them. The 38-year-old information technology worker from New Mexico had a prescription. Her pharmacy had the drugs in stock. And her health insurance covered all but $25 to $50 of the monthly cost. For Griffin, the hardest part of using the new drugs wasn’t access. It was finding out that the much-hyped medications didn’t really work for her. “I have been on Wegovy for a year and a half and have only lost 13 pounds,” said Griffin, who watches her diet, drinks plenty of water and exercises regularly. “I’ve done everything right with no success. It’s discouraging.” In clinical trials, most participants taking Wegovy or Mounjaro to treat obesity lost an average of 15% to 22% of their body weight — up to 50 pounds or more in many cases. But roughly 10% to 15% of patients in those trials were “nonresponders” who lost less than 5% of their body weight. Now that millions of people have used the drugs, several obesity experts told The Associated Press that perhaps 20% of patients — as many as 1 in 5 — may not respond well to the medications. It's a little-known consequence of the obesity drug boom, according to doctors who caution eager patients not to expect one-size-fits-all results. “It's all about explaining that different people have different responses,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital The drugs are known as GLP-1 receptor agonists because they mimic a hormone in the body known as glucagon-like peptide 1. Genetics, hormones and variability in how the brain regulates energy can all influence weight — and a person's response to the drugs, Stanford said. Medical conditions such as sleep apnea can prevent weight loss, as can certain common medications, such as antidepressants, steroids and contraceptives. “This is a disease that stems from the brain,” said Stanford. “The dysfunction may not be the same” from patient to patient. Despite such cautions, patients are often upset when they start getting the weekly injections but the numbers on the scale barely budge. “It can be devastating,” said Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of the obesity treatment company FlyteHealth. “With such high expectations, there’s so much room for disappointment.” That was the case for Griffin, who has battled obesity since childhood and hoped to shed 70 pounds using Wegovy. The drug helped reduce her appetite and lowered her risk of diabetes, but she saw little change in weight. “It’s an emotional roller coaster,” she said. “You want it to work like it does for everybody else.” The medications are typically prescribed along with eating behavior and lifestyle changes. It’s usually clear within weeks whether someone will respond to the drugs, said Dr. Jody Dushay, an endocrine specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Weight loss typically begins right away and continues as the dosage increases. For some patients, that just doesn't happen. For others, side effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea force them to halt the medications, Dushay said. In such situations, patients who were counting on the new drugs to pare pounds may think they’re out of options. “I tell them: It's not game over,” Dushay said. Trying a different version of the new class of drugs may help. Griffin, who didn't respond well to Wegovy, has started using Zepbound, which targets an additional hormone pathway in the body. After three months of using the drug, she has lost 7 pounds. “I'm hoping it's slow and steady,” she said. Other people respond well to older drugs, the experts said. Changing diet, exercise, sleep and stress habits can also have profound effects. Figuring out what works typically requires a doctor trained to treat obesity, Saunders noted. “Obesity is such a complex disease that really needs to be treated very comprehensively,” she said. “If what we’re prescribing doesn’t work, we always have a backup plan.” The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Beyoncé Bowl now streaming on Netflix: Key moments to rewatch from masterful halftime showOne morning last March, tens of millions of people in West Africa woke up to find they had no more internet. Hospitals were shut out of patient records. Business owners couldn’t pay wages. In homes and on sidewalks, people stared at the wheel icon rolling endlessly on their screens. “Connecting,” it promised. It wasn’t. People remained disconnected — some for hours, many for days. “It created panic all over,” said Kwabena Agadzi, head of communication technology at one of Ghana’s largest insurance companies, Starlife. “As if the world was coming to an end.” In the absence of hard information, rumors flew. It was a coup, some said. It was sabotage, said others. Even those who guessed what was really happening knew that identifying the problem and fixing it were two very different things. Despite its name, the Trou Sans Fond — the Bottomless Hole, in French — a sinuous canyon carved into the continental shelf off Ivory Coast, does have a bottom. It’s just very, very deep down. The chasm begins near the coastline with a precipitous drop of nearly 3,000 feet. Nested in the murky water at the bottom, at times some 2 miles deep, and buffeted by powerful currents lie cables that provide internet service across West Africa. Many nations use cables like these, but for emerging economies with limited alternatives, they are a lifeline to the rest of the world. On the morning of March 14, there was a big problem. Cables on the floor of the Trou Sans Fond began going offline. When the fourth went out, some five hours after the first, people in a dozen countries got an unwelcome reminder: No one is truly untethered. “The more we rely on our phones to get everything done, the more we forget how we connect,” said Jennifer Counter, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But there’s still a cable somewhere.” Some know this all too well. When cables malfunction, it is their job to wrest them from the muck of the seabed, splice them together and lower them back down, thrumming once again with data. And so the day after the trouble at the bottom of the Bottomless Hole, the Léon Thévenin, a 41-year-old, 107-meter repair ship based in Cape Town, South Africa, prepared to set sail. Ahead lay a voyage of about 10 days up Africa’s western coast. Any number of things can knock an undersea cable out of service. Landslides can do it. So can a ship dragging its anchor. There may be unintended damage from military skirmishes. And then there is sabotage, a growing concern. But most components of the physical internet are privately owned, and the companies behind them have very little incentive to explain any failures. That can make it daunting for people who rely on the cables to try to get a handle on why an outage is happening. Especially in real time. On March 14, the regional chief information officer for the Ecobank Group in Ivory Coast knew only one thing for sure as he stared at signals blipping red in his offices: There was a problem. Still, it was early in the day. Banks were not due to open for another 30 minutes. That was probably enough time, figured the information officer, Issouf Nikiema, for his IT engineers to sort it out. Those hopes faded when the techs came back to his office in Abidjan. “Even their body language — I realized that something was really wrong,” Nikiema said. Ecobank alone serves 28 million people across the continent. But many other businesses, from sprawling bank chains to modest food stands, were hit, especially after the fourth cable went out and the internet went into free fall. Africa is a continent of 1.4 billion people where economic ambitions are high but the infrastructure often lags. People have learned the art of the workaround, and so when the electricity fails, generators often come to the rescue. If the Wi-Fi goes down, mobile data might still do the trick. But this time was different. In many places, the shutdown was total. “Imagine waking up in New York with no Wi-Fi at home, no data on your phone, no internet available at your local Starbucks, at your office, no way to check your bank accounts on your Chase app,” said Sarah Coulibaly, a technology expert at Ivory Coast’s national telecommunications agency. In Accra, Ghana’s capital, international travelers arriving at the airport could not locate their rental cars. In Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city, restaurants couldn’t use WhatsApp to order local produce. And more than 500 miles away in Ibadan, Nigeria’s third-largest city, Oke Iyanda couldn’t collect money for the food that she sells to students and university workers. Sales of abula, a popular mix of yam powder, vegetables, pepper stew and goat meat, plummeted and food spoiled. The failures highlighted a broader problem for African countries: For all their technological progress, they are served by far fewer cables than more developed countries are, and often lack backup systems. By contrast, when two data cables linking four European countries were cut in quick succession in the Baltic Sea last month, service interruptions were relatively minimal. (American intelligence officials assessed that the cables had not been cut deliberately, but the European authorities have not ruled out sabotage.) For Africa, some help is on the way. Starlink’s satellite internet technology now operates in at least 15 countries, and a 28,000-mile-long cable being built by a consortium of companies has begun to come online. Still, the continent’s dependence on private — and for the most part Western — internet providers can make true sovereignty elusive. “We’re at the mercy of these cable operators,” said Kalil Konaté, Ivory Coast’s minister for digital transition. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) For an Uber driver in, say, Stockholm or Buenos Aires, an internet outage is a big inconvenience. In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, it can mean calamity. With his clients locked out of their bank accounts, one driver there, Segun Oladejoye, said he went without work for three days. The timing could hardly have been worse. Months earlier, Oladejoye, a 46-year-old father of four, had taken out a loan for his Uber car. With barely any savings, the only way he could pay back the $30 weekly installment and feed his family was through even longer hours of work. Worried that the lending company might seize his car, Oladejoye said, he borrowed still more money, this time from a Chinese lending app. “It still hurts me and my family,” he said, “because I now have to pay back both loans.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) According to Telegeography, an internet data and mapping company, there are hundreds of cables crossing the floors and canyons of the earth’s oceans. Stretched end to end, they would reach approximately 1 million miles. Though not dramatically different in appearance from the slender cables a local TV provider would run into an apartment building, at any moment they are conveying a vast number of messages, from WhatsApp flirtations to complex financial transactions. People have been laying cables underwater since the dawn of the telegraph age in the mid-1800s, but those being put down now bear little resemblance to their forebears. At the center of modern cables are fiber-optic lines, usually numbering four to 24 fibers. Thinner than a human hair, each is coated with a different color so they don’t get mixed up. The composition of the cables depends in part on the depth of the water, said Verne Steyn, director of subsea networks at WIOCC, a major digital wholesaler in Africa. In deepwater locations, the cables often have a black outer polyethylene layer. Below is a wrap of metal tape, then another polyethylene layer, a copper sleeve to conduct electricity, and a tangle of stainless steel wires to provide strength. Only then comes a small metal tube holding the fiber-optic lines, which are often coated with glycerin jelly as a last protection against the water. The result is a remarkably sturdy conduit — but not an invulnerable one. And in a world ever more dependent on the uninterrupted flow of data, that worries people. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) Just weeks before the cables went out in the Trou Sans Fond, cables in the Red Sea serving East Africa and Asia were severed by a ship’s anchor. They were a casualty of war: The ship had been hit by a missile fired by militants in Yemen backing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And about two months later, two more cables were torn apart in shallow waters off Mozambique by a fishing trawler. Its crew had reportedly switched off its tracking system so it could operate in protected waters. (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) Some communications experts argue that the way to make internet infrastructure more resilient to the inevitable problems is redundancy — just lay more cables, so there are more alternative pathways for data, and that has happened. Twenty years ago, for example, there were just two major cables strung along the West African coast, according to Steyn. But sometimes, that just means more cables are cut at once. “The seabed is not as peaceful as it once was,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a network monitoring company. “Just adding more cables doesn’t solve all your problems. The fact of today’s internet is that we’ve got to survive multiple cable cuts in a single incident.” It might be better, he and other experts say, to diversify the location of the cables and set up more on land, though that can be more expensive and pose geopolitical challenges. And more cables can do only so much. Katarzyna Zysk, a professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies in Oslo, said that there were mounting, credible reports of sabotage around the world. “I believe that the infrastructure is highly vulnerable and presents an attractive target,” Zysk said. Sabotage did not, however, appear to play a role in the outage in the Trou San Fond, analyses of the crews that eventually repaired the cables and independent experts interviewed by The New York Times said. To try to understand what happened, Madory, a pathologist of sorts for the undersea communication network, used clues from the internet’s global addressing system, known as BGP, and the network’s attempts to route traffic around the broken connections. He was able to pinpoint the time of the first cable failure at 5:02 a.m. local time. The three others followed at 5:31, 7:45 and 10:33. “You can see in the routing system a little scramble as the rest of the internet tries to figure out how to reach these networks,” Madory said. The cascade of failures offers strong evidence that the culprit was almost certainly one of the underwater mudslides or avalanches — scientists call them turbidity currents — that are fairly common in that region. As the Léon Thévenin steamed northward along the coast, it was outfitted with a curious mix of old and new. Coiled in its belly were miles of replacement cable and heavy rope. Steel grapnels were fastened to lengths of chain that would be dragged along the sea bottom to snag broken cables and haul them to the surface. The master of the ship, Capt. Benoît Petit, delicately rolled out huge charts — they resembled scrolls — showing the broad topography of the Trou Sans Fond. But there was also high-tech splicing equipment, and needles on dials in the ship’s work areas quivered as amber, red and green lights flashed. Always on call, with sailors rotating in and out to keep the active crew at about 55, the Léon Thévenin is one of six repair ships operated by Orange Marine, a subsidiary of Orange, the French telecommunications giant. Orange Marine says it carries out 12% to 15% of the roughly 200 cable repairs that take place around the world each year. Crew members sometimes have trouble making their families and friends online understand what they do on long voyages. “I say it straight: ‘I’m a fiber optics splicer,’” said Shuru Arendse. “What is that?” comes the reply, so he tries again. “I repair the data communication cables on the seabed.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) But still no. So Arendse keeps it simple. “I keep Africa connected to the rest of the world,” he says. But before he can, his crew has to find the cable breaks — no easy task. (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) Frédéric Salle, the onboard mission chief, regards each repair as a forensic investigation and each break as a “crime scene,” even if malfeasance is not suspected. But the evidence in this case would have to be deduced from surveys, charts and hauling up the cable itself rather than imagery of the sea bottom. The waters of the Trou Sans Fond were too deep and the canyon walls too steep to send down a camera-laden remote vehicle. Didier Dillard, the chief executive of Orange Marine, said the crews operated in a world of the unknown. “When you go beyond 1,000 meters depth,” he said, “nobody really knows what the seabed is like, because nobody goes there. It can be rocky, sandy, muddy — you can just imagine.” But there were clues to where the breaks the Léon Thévenin was looking for might be, and what had caused them. The cables’ depth put them out of reach of passing fishing nets or anchors. And Salle determined that they had broken in order from closest to the coastline to farthest — strong evidence that there had been an avalanche, since that was the direction one would speed down the slope of the canyon. Another sign: Light signals sent through the fiber optics revealed that the break was squarely within the canyon, where avalanches occur, Salle said. “There was no doubt as to the identity of ‘the perpetrator,’” he said. The repair itself, Salle said, involved cutting the cables on either side of the breaks and fastening them to buoys. Then jointers got to work splicing a length of new cable into place. First stripping off the colored coating, they carefully melted and joined the strands from two cable pieces — the microsurgery of internet repair — checking to be sure that laser light was flowing freely across the repaired joint. They boxed it all up into an elaborate splint. Then it was time to drop the cable back into the sea and move on to the others. When the last cable was patched, about a month after the crew left South Africa, it was time to head home. With the breaks repaired, internet service returned to normal in West Africa — but “normal” is relative. Outages, though shorter, remain frequent. And some think another cable-snapping avalanche is just a matter of time. Konaté, the Ivorian digital transition minister, said that the March outage was a wake-up call and that he had asked cable providers like Google to offer terrestrial backup solutions. “This cannot happen again,” he said. (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) In the port of Cape Town, another Orange Marine mission chief, Didier Mainguy, said that for all the lasers and fiber optics, little had changed fundamentally from a century and a half ago. To make his point, Mainguy held up a mounted piece of old telegraph cable in his quarters. “It’s still a cable,” he said. “It was a cable a hundred years ago. Voilà.”

When baseball historian Bill Humber first heard about the golden at-bat idea that Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred floated on a recent podcast, he was a little taken aback. “I kind of laughed, actually,” Humber said Wednesday. “I thought it was one of the stupidest ideas I’d ever heard.” MLB has seen its share of change of late, but the thought of a team using one at-bat each game to send any hitter it wants to the plate — even if it’s not their turn in the batting order — was quite a curveball. “This can’t be real,” former Blue Jays pitcher and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens posted on social media. Wild-card playoff tinkering, pitch clocks, shift rules and automatic runners are some of the more significant changes to the game in recent years. All had varying levels of detractors and the golden at-bat discussion is no different. Critics are eyeing it like a meatball thrown across the middle of the plate. “It doesn’t really fit within the logic of the game in my mind,” said Humber, a Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer. “I look upon it quite askance to be honest with you. I don’t see the point of it in a way. “I mean to some extent, the magic of baseball is those unheralded batters who arrive at a situation that one wouldn’t have thought that they would ever have been in, and allowing them to bat in place.” Humber cited a number of grand baseball moments that might not have happened if a golden at-bat rule were in effect. “One can imagine when Bobby Thomson hit his famous home run against the (Brooklyn) Dodgers in 1951, Willie Mays was on deck,” he said of the ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ that gave the New York Giants the National League pennant. “What if they had a golden at-bat and put Mays at bat, maybe he would have struck out or popped up or hit into a double-play or who knows what. There’s lots of situations like that.” What about the two famous World Series-winning walkoffs? Would the skippers have used a golden at-bat to get their best pure hitter to the plate? Bill Mazeroski went deep to give Pittsburgh the Fall Classic in 1960 and Joe Carter’s walkoff blast in 1993 gave the Blue Jays their second straight World Series title. Mazeroski’s power numbers were middling while Carter, who led the Blue Jays in homers and RBIs that year, had a mediocre batting average. “I think the magic of the game are those moments that are unpredictable and yet kind of create some of the joy of the game in our memories,” Humber said. ” I think this kind of runs afoul of that tradition. “I’m not a fan, let me say that. But that’s not to say it won’t happen.” Manfred first mentioned the golden at-bat idea publicly in an interview with John Ourand on Puck’s “The Varsity” podcast. The commissioner said the subject came up at a recent owners’ meeting. Retired sportswriter Dave Perkins, who covered the Blue Jays for years over his long career at the Toronto Star, said use of a golden at-bat would be “a travesty.” “On the surface I say it’s absolutely stupid and ridiculous,” he said. “But a lot of other things I thought were stupid and ridiculous worked their way into the games and they’re even OK with me now.” The subject of potential rule changes like the golden at-bat came up when Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins met with the Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America earlier this week. “It’s interesting to me because we went through so much change over the last couple of years,” he said. “Getting to that change was a scratch and a claw and a climb. And then once the change happened, everyone — for the most part — thought, ‘OK, that went OK and it seems like there’s a better product on the field.’ “So now the dialogue around change is with a much more open mind whether it be players, staff, the exchanges, the ideas, even if they seem very difficult to wrap your head around. They’re not getting stiff-armed as much as they were the first go-round.” Scott Crawford, operations director of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, said he prefers a traditional setup where any player can be a hero at any time. “I like the team aspect of the game where you get your shot,” he said. “You can be a No. 8 hitter and you can come up with a big hit and win a World Series and (a superstar like Shohei) Ohtani can strike out.” This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 4, 2024. Follow @GregoryStrongCP on X. Gregory Strong, The Canadian PressOil company Phillips 66 faces federal charges related to alleged Clean Water Act violations LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oil company Phillips 66 has been federally indicted in connection with alleged violations of the Clean Water Act in California. The Texas-based company is accused of discharging hundreds of thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater containing excessive amounts of oil and grease. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment on Thursday. Phillips is charged with two counts of negligently violating the Clean Water Act and four counts of knowingly violating the Clean Water Act. An arraignment date has not been set. A spokesperson for the company said it was cooperating with prosecutors. US regulators seek to break up Google, forcing Chrome sale as part of monopoly punishment U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade. The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Justice Department calls for Google to sell its industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions designed to prevent Android from favoring its search engine. Regulators also want to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple’s iPhone and other devices. What you need to know about the proposed measures designed to curb Google's search monopoly U.S. regulators are proposing aggressive measures to restore competition to the online search market after a federal judge ruled that Google maintained an illegal monopoly. The sweeping set of recommendations filed late Wednesday could radically alter Google’s business. Regulators want Google to sell off its industry-leading Chrome web browser. They outlined a range of behavioral measures such as prohibiting Google from using search results to favor its own services such as YouTube, and forcing it to license search index data to its rivals. They're not going as far as to demand Google spin off Android, but are leaving that door open if the remedies don't work. SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who led US crackdown on cryptocurrencies, to step down Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler will step down from his post on January 20. Since taking the lead at the SEC, the commission has been aggressive in its oversight of cryptocurrencies and other regulatory issues. President-elect Donald Trump had promised during his campaign that he would remove Gensler, who has led the U.S. government’s crackdown on the crypto industry and repeatedly called for more oversight. But Gensler on Thursday announced that he would be stepping down from his post on the day that Trump is inaugurated. Bitcoin has jumped 40% since Trump’s victory. US intelligence warns defense companies of Russian sabotage threat WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials are warning American defense companies to increase their security after a wave of sabotage in Europe blamed on Russia. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center issued a public bulletin Thursday advising companies that work in the defense industry that Russia may seek to carry out acts of sabotage as part of its effort to undercut Ukraine's allies and their ability to support Ukraine in its defense against Russia. Western authorities say they believe Russian intelligence is behind several recent acts of sabotage targeting European defense companies. Russia has denied the allegations. Elon Musk's budget crusade could cause a constitutional clash in Trump's second term WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of finding ways to cut government spending and regulations. It's possible that their efforts will lead to a constitutional clash. This week, Musk and Ramaswamy said they would encourage the Republican president-elect to refuse to spend money allocated by Congress, which would conflict with a 1974 law that's intended to prevent presidents from blocking funds. If Trump takes such a step, it would quickly become one of the most closely watched legal battles of his second administration. Musk and Ramaswamy also aim to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce. Bitcoin is at the doorstep of $100,000 as post-election rally rolls on NEW YORK (AP) — Bitcoin is jumping again, rising above $98,000 for the first time Thursday. The cryptocurrency has been shattering records almost daily since the U.S. presidential election, and has rocketed more than 40% higher in just two weeks. It's now at the doorstep of $100,000. Cryptocurrencies and related investments like crypto exchange-traded funds have rallied because the incoming Trump administration is expected to be more “crypto-friendly.” Still, as with everything in the volatile cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict. And while some are bullish, other experts continue to warn of investment risks. Cutting in line? American Airlines' new boarding tech might stop you at now over 100 airports NEW YORK (AP) — Sneaking a little ahead of line to get on that plane faster? American Airlines might stop you. In an apparent effort to reduce the headaches caused airport line cutting, American has rolled out boarding technology that alerts gate agents with an audible sound if a passenger tries to scan a ticket ahead of their assigned group. This new software won’t accept a boarding pass before the group it’s assigned to is called, so customers who get to the gate prematurely will be asked to go back and wait their turn. As of Wednesday, the airline announced, this technology is now being used in more than 100 U.S. airports that American flies out of. The official expansion arrives after successful tests in three of these locations. Stock market today: Wall Street rises with Nvidia as bitcoin bursts above $99,000 NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks climbed after market superstar Nvidia and another round of companies said they’re making even fatter profits than expected. The S&P 500 pulled 0.5% higher Thursday after flipping between modest gains and losses several times in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1.1%, and the Nasdaq composite edged up by less than 0.1%. Banks, smaller companies and other areas of the stock market that tend to do best when the economy is strong helped lead the way, while bitcoin briefly broke above $99,000. Crude oil, meanwhile, continued to rise. Treasury yields inched higher in the bond market. What will happen to CNBC and MSNBC when they no longer have a corporate connection to NBC News? Two television networks with “NBC” in their names — MSNBC and CNBC — will no longer have any corporate connection to NBC News once a spinoff formally takes effect in about a year. Comcast is cutting loose several of its cable companies into a separate company in order to improve its bottom line. It leaves several questions, particularly for MSNBC. Will the news network geared to liberal viewers continue to use NBC News personnel? Will it have to leave its offices and studios at the NBC News headquarters in New York's Rockefeller Center? Will they even keep the same names?WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has selected former White House aide Brooke Rollins to lead the Department of Agriculture in his second administration. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has selected former White House aide Brooke Rollins to lead the Department of Agriculture in his second administration. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has selected former White House aide Brooke Rollins to lead the Department of Agriculture in his second administration. Here are some things to know about Trump’s choice and the agency that Rollins would lead if she is confirmed by the Senate. She is a lawyer with agriculture ties — and a strong relationship with Trump Rollins, 52, graduated from Texas A&M University with an undergraduate degree in agricultural development before completing law school at the University of Texas. She served as domestic policy chief during Trump’s first term, a portfolio that included agricultural policy. After leaving the White House, she became president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration. Over the years, Rollins has forged a strong enough relationship with Trump, who has prized proven loyalty in his Cabinet and top adviser picks, that she was among the people floated as a potential White House chief of staff. That job went to Susie Wiles, Trump’s co-campaign manager. Rollins, in an interview earlier this year, called Trump an “amazing boss.” USDA is about more than farms President Abraham Lincoln founded the USDA in 1862, when about half of all Americans lived on farms. The sprawling department now reaches into every American neighborhood, grocery store and school cafeteria. The USDA is the primary agency overseeing the nation’s farming, forestry, ranching, food quality and nutrition. The agency has a dual purpose of promoting and regulating agriculture practice and products. The agency oversees multiple support programs for farmers; animal and plant health; and the safety of meat, poultry and eggs that anchor the nation’s food supply. Its federal nutrition programs provide food to low-income people, pregnant women and young children. And the department sets standards for school meals. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. The next USDA chief could figure prominently in Trump 2.0 Trump did not offer many specifics about his agriculture policies during the campaign. But if he keeps his pledge to impose sweeping tariffs, farmers could be affected quickly — and potentially harshly. During the first Trump administration, countries like China responded to Trump’s tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports like the corn and soybeans routinely sold overseas. Trump countered by offering massive multibillion-dollar aid to farmers to help them weather the trade war. The ripple effects could extend to consumers’ grocery bills, as well. When things are going smoothly, agriculture secretaries are not usually prominent faces of an administration. But when the nation’s food supply is at issue, it could be another story. ___ Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Advertisement AdvertisementTyson Fury is working hard ahead of his rematch with Oleksandr Usyk next month, and he has been showing off the results of his efforts so far. 'The Gypsy King' fell to the first defeat of his professional career against the Ukrainian in May, but he will have the opportunity to exact his revenge on the 21st of December when they run it back in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Fury has told his fans to expect a more aggressive approach to the rematch, after admitting he 'got it wrong' in his preparations for the first fight earlier this year. Tyson Fury's professional boxing record (as of 25/11/24) 36 fights 34 wins 1 loss By knockout 24 0 By decision 10 1 Draws 1 "I’ve always been a bad man my whole life, and I’m still one today at nearly 40 years old; a few years off 40, but I like to say that," Fury told TNT Sport. "I’m going to go in there with ‘destroy mode’. Last time I went to box him, I was being cautious. I boxed the head right off him. Let’s talk facts. Anyone can get caught, as we’ve seen in a lot of these heavyweight fights. But this time I’m not going for a points decision. I’m going to knock a m**********r out. "For the first time in years, I’m going in there as a challenger, not a champion. And I believe that I’m better as a challenger, always, because I’ve got that goal of achieving something and it’s giving me a fire underneath." Fury's never been afraid to make big predictions before his fights, but recent images taken from his camp for the Usyk bout suggests that he's taking his shot at redemption very seriously. GIVEMESPORT's Key Statistic: Tyson Fury has won every rematch he has ever had in his career by stoppage. Tyson Fury Looks in Some of the Best Shape of his Career Ahead of Usyk Rematch Fury has enlisted the help of Kevin Lerena, the current WBC Bridgerweight champion, as a sparring partner for the contest. A picture was posted by Lerena of the pair, with Fury looking in impressive shape by his usual standards, with a bulkier upper body and the noticeable absence of a gut. Alongside the striking image, Lerena wrote: "Life in the camp is buzzing. Only a month left until the heavyweight championship fight. The energy in the gym is electrifying. The preparation matches the determination, desire, and will to succeed. We’re working hard during training." Boxing heavyweight Tyson Fury has threatened to burn one of the titles should he ever win it back. A southpaw with a similar stature to Usyk, Lerena is the ideal style of fighter for Fury to work with as he bids to reverse his split decision defeat from earlier this year. This wouldn't be the first time that the Morecambe man has packed on weight for a rematch, either. After drawing with Deontay Wilder in 2018, Fury packed on 17lbs for their 2020 sequel and blasted out 'The Bronze Bomber' in seven rounds. And 'The Gypsy King' is hoping that a similar approach can work against the dangerous Usyk. Fury's coach, Andy Lee, has claimed that his fighter was unable to do any proper sparring ahead of his last outing with Usyk, after sustaining a cut above his right eye before their initial planned meeting. From the looks of the photos coming out of Fury's camp, that won't be an issue this time around. The 36-year-old even shared a defiant message on social media while topless, where he vowed to even the score with Usyk. He declared: "Four weeks to go to the biggest fight of the year. The biggest fight in boxing. Me and Usyk, and I’m coming in hot. I’m coming in hot! Get up, can’t wait. December 21... the belts are gonna be mine again! Get up!" The greatest British heavyweights ever to grace the squared circle have been ranked...

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